Remember that one day when you could wake up without an alarm? When you would get your favorite bowl of cereal and sit between the hours of 8 and 12? This is a blog dedicated to the greatest time of our childhood: Saturday mornings. The television programs you watched, the memories attached to them, and maybe introducing you to something you didn't realize existed. Updated every weekend.

THE MUMBLY CARTOON SHOW

He was an unassuming detective in a
frumpy trench coat and a shoddy little car that seemed almost unable to find
the loose change in your couch, let alone solve a crime. And yet, somehow, he
always got his man.

Mumbly in his jalopy.

If those of you old enough to know
thought that was describing Columbo, a
series starring Peter Falk
as the title character, you’d be half right. In 1976, Hanna-Barbera took inspiration
from the mystery series to create a “new” character: Mumbly (Don Messick). Why “new”?
Because Mumbly was a redressing of the previously-existing character, Muttley (also Messick).
Hanna-Barbera wanted to use him again, but because he and his owner, Dick
Dastardly (Paul Winchell), were co-owned by Heatter-Quigley
Productions in a deal for an intended game show, Hanna-Barbera wasn’t free
to use them as regularly as their other characters. So, they changed Muttley’s fur,
gave him a coat and a car that lost pieces as it drove, and Mumbly was born.

Mumbly and Shnooker enjoying some downtime.

The
Mumbly Cartoon Show debuted on ABC on
September 11, 1976 as part of the package show Tom & Jerry/Grape Ape/Mumbly Show alongside reruns of The New Tom & Jerry Show and The Grape Ape Show, and then the reduced
Tom & Jerry/Mumbly Show after Grape Ape was broken off into its own show.
The series followed Mumbly as he was tasked by his boss, Chief Shnooker (John
Stephenson), with solving impossible crimes—often at the threat of losing his
job—that Shnooker was either too frightened or couldn’t be bothered to do. Of
course, Shnooker didn’t hesitate when it came to taking the credit for closing the
case. One of the running gags featured a criminal who could run off absolutely
anywhere in the world only to find Mumbly already there and waiting to arrest
them. The series was written by Bill
Ackerman, Larz Bourne, Tom Dagenais, Alan Dinehart, Don Jurwich, Joel Kane, Dick Kinney, Frank Ridgeway, with music by Hoyt Curtin.

Mumbly getting the drop on a giant lumberjack.

Mumbly
only ran for a single season, continuing on in reruns through the early
part of 1977. While it aired primarily on Saturday morning, “The Fatbeard the Pirate
Fracas” aired as part of ABC’s
Thanksgiving Funshine Festival on Thanksgiving Day. Hanna-Barbera decided
to recycle Mumbly further by including him as one of the villains, the Really
Rottens, in Laff-A-Lympics;
teamed-up with The Dread Baron (Stephenson) who was a pastiche for
Dastardly. Following the end of that series, Mumbly disappeared into relative
obscurity; only appearing again as part of a clip segment in ABC’s 1983 Saturday Morning
Preview Special.